Gambling Glossary

Gambling jargon and unusual or technical terms used
on the Smartgambler website.

Wood-duck

Also referred to as a Woody. Bumbling amateur. Person
who makes all the classic mistakes and gets burned
in whatever endeavour they are undertaking. Carries
overtones of happy, carefree blundering.

Expected
return

(ER) Mathematical term used to describe the average
amount a wager or investment will yield. The expected
return on a fair (even money) bet is 100% (sometimes
written as 1.0) The ER tells the punter how much money
the house will take off them on average per bet. If
the casino has for instance, a 2.7% edge at Roulette,
it is expressed as an ER of .973 or 97.3%.

Probability

The likelihood of an event happening expressed as
a ratio. For example the probability of a head being
thrown in a fair coin toss is 50% (0.5) If something
has a one in four chance of happening the probability
would be expressed as 25% or 0.25.

Card
counting

Used in Blackjack and less commonly Baccarat. By
assigning numerical values to categories of cards,
such as minus 2 for aces, tens and picture cards and
plus 2 for threes, fours, fives and sixes, an adding
and subtracting technique can be used to tell the
player whether the remainder of the shoe is richer
in high cards or low. In Blackjack a deck rich in
high cards tends to favour the player, so card counters
can raise their bets at a favourable time and gain
an advantage over many casinos.

Comp

Complimentaries. Incentives such as free travel,
free accommodation, free meals and even cash rebates,
used by casinos to attract high turnover players.

Market
framing/handicapping

Computing the correct probability that each contestant
in an event has of winning, or computing the likelihood
of a given event occurring. Comparing an accurately
framed market to the odds on offer from less informed
sources can reveal value bets.

Basic
strategy

Used for playing Blackjack accurately. Every decision
required at Blackjack has a statistically correct
answer that has been worked out by massive computer
simulations. The tables of correct decisions under
the varying rules at different casinos are readily
available. By memorising the table for a given casino,
a player has already reduced their disadvantage to
around 0.5% before card counting.
Basic Strategy Tables